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*looks at to-do list*
Oh, right, now my brain decides it wants to tell stories.
The day the availability of my writing ability lines up with the availability of my free time, I will throw a fucking parade.
Hmph.
The first ten people to leave drabble requests may get something written for them when I've listened to these lecture recordings and typed up notes. Fandoms I'm currently feeling creatively inclined towards are Bones, Avatar, Naruto and...probably Iron Man. You could try me with Doctor Who/Torchwood or BSG, but I'm massively behind on all of them. Or you could just throw a random prompt up there and then bat your eyes hopefully -- you know me, I'm not very good at turning down challenges.
Oh, right, now my brain decides it wants to tell stories.
The day the availability of my writing ability lines up with the availability of my free time, I will throw a fucking parade.
Hmph.
The first ten people to leave drabble requests may get something written for them when I've listened to these lecture recordings and typed up notes. Fandoms I'm currently feeling creatively inclined towards are Bones, Avatar, Naruto and...probably Iron Man. You could try me with Doctor Who/Torchwood or BSG, but I'm massively behind on all of them. Or you could just throw a random prompt up there and then bat your eyes hopefully -- you know me, I'm not very good at turning down challenges.
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(I love this idea SO MUCH)
With heroic effort, Tony shoved his phone into his back pocket. He kept the mental image, though; he figured she owed him that much. Bikini firmly envisaged, he turned back to the patiently smiling man.
"Fine, whatever. Jasmine," he said. "That was the one you made yesterday, right? The one that was slightly less horrific than all the others?"
The man's smile didn't flicker, but his eyebrows crept upwards. "I would have thought, sir, that a man with your experience would be a little less casual with a word like 'horrific'." And then, before Tony could quite quash the terrible feeling of juvenile guilt that this guy was so good at inspiring, he continued, "Jasmine? Excellent choice, sir. I'll go warm up the pot."
Tony glared at the man's retreating back. "This was not the plan," he complained. "Why did I have to hire someone even bossier than Potts?"
"He came highly recommended, sir," Jarvis said. "And he has kept your schedule impeccably."
"I want Potts," Tony muttered; if he was going to be treated like a five-year-old, he felt perfectly justified in acting like one. "When does she get back?"
"In five days." Jarvis paused. "You'll notice that this number has not changed from the previous three times I have provided it for you this morning, sir."
"Oh, go and run maintenance on the security system or something."
Iroh was frowning when he re-entered the room. "You are carrying a lot of tension in your shoulders."
Tony, mindful of the fact that he had to spend another five days with the man, bit back his first comment about the weight of the Iron Man suit and settled for some mild sarcasm.
"And what I really need is a nice cup of tea, right?"
"Actually," Iroh said, with the exact pitch of respectful reproach that Jarvis had mastered within the first two beta versions, "I was going to suggest a massage. I am highly proficient in several forms of therapeutic chakra manipulation."
Tony eyed him suspiciously. "Now you're going to tell me that you could also break my neck with two knuckles or something."
Iroh set down the tea, shrugged, and kept smiling.
What the hell, Tony thought. "Yeah, okay," he said, wriggled out of his shirt, and threw himself onto the nearest couch.
"Relax, sir," Iroh said in a voice like quiet, late-night, soporific jazz music. "Imagine your troubles flowing through your skin and into a gentle river."
Tony gave that a shot, but the bikini got in the way -- river, beach, practically the same idea, right?
Iroh put his hands carefully against the skin of Tony's upper back, probed around for a moment, and then dug in all at once with what seemed like four hands' worth of fingertips.
"Gnnnnnn," Tony said, and melted into the cushions.
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*miiiight have been threadstalking this. just a little.*
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He really is JUST LIKE ZUKO OMG THIS IS FABULOUS
And of course he does not properly appreciate the soothing properties of a nice cup of jasmine tea. >:(
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this follows on from the one above
"Didn't anyone ever teach you how to punctuate?" she says, when she reaches him.
Tony grins and takes off the sunglasses. "Nope. Never. You're sunburnt, Potts." She smiles. She doesn't hug him; they don't hug. But she smiles, and Tony makes a grab for her luggage, clearly enjoying his little act. "Car's outside. Come on. You can tell me all about how much you missed me."
"I read six books," Pepper says. "There were cocktails and sleeping in and several very attractive waiters."
"And a creative combination of all of the above, I suppose," Tony snips, and his forehead does something petulant, and Pepper smiles and lies --
"So you see, I didn't miss you at all."
Tony is sulkily quiet during the drive home, and Pepper mentally reviews his schedule for the next couple of weeks. Half an hour later she's halfway through physically reviewing it, admiring the neat efforts of the man who was her substitute, when Tony drags her into the kitchen and demands that she make him a cup of coffee. He seems uncharacteristically urgent about it, and lets out a blissful sigh when he takes the first sip.
"Jasmine my ass," he murmurs. "No substitute. Oh my god. Yes. Coffee."
"Will that be all, Mr Stark?" She's amused despite herself, and is about to leave when Tony sets down the mug and shakes his head, one arm outstretched.
"I don't know what I'd do without you, Potts."
They don't hug but now they are, and Pepper doesn't have time to think or prepare or anything and her heart stutters for a moment like a sixteen-year-old being taken to prom. But then she remembers following the news every evening on her hotel room's TV and reading the papers in the morning, hearing Tony's most urbane voice on the radio describing war and devastation and corruption and all the things he has to see before he can fight them; she remembers how close she came to picking up the emergency cell phone and calling him; she feels the slight tremor in Tony's coffee-warm hands before he steadies them on her lower back.
"Okay," she murmurs, and slips her arms around him, "okay," and she means it's and we're and a lot of other things that she doesn't yet trust herself to voice.
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Also, hi ♥
(hi!)
This is an old argument. Neji suspects he is simply the easiest person for Naruto to argue with, in the absence of any other likely suspects. The knowledge just makes him angrier.
"You know nothing," he hisses. "You have no idea what I would give to be free of my name's weight."
He waits for the next outburst, but after a moment Naruto lifts his hand and Neji stands very still as the Uzumaki pushes his hitai-ate and his headband upwards as a single block of fabric, laying bare the blue lines on his forehead. Naruto traces them with one finger and Neji thinks, all right then, and puts his own hand square against the curse seal on the other boy's stomach. He can feel body warmth through the shirt and he can feel roiling spitting power underneath that, totally at odds with Naruto's calm eyes.
They stand like that for a while and then Naruto says, his voice layered with laughter, "I suppose we could call this one a draw."
Neither of them are the type to accept compromise. But Neji nods.
Hyuuga Neji can read violence in the line of someone's elbow and envy in the pattern of their lips and breath -- he's good, he's very good, but if the people around him are books then Naruto is written in large, stark characters meant for people with the blindness that Neji's eyes only hint mockingly at, or for children. He is a book well illustrated. Open and guileless in everything he does and every expression that moves fluidly across his features, simple to interpret, effortless to read.
This would be easy, Neji realises. He moves his fingers purposefully against the seal and Naruto looks at him, curious and aware, the heat of his skin and the violence of his chakra creating something in Neji's body that he is far too self-aware not to recognise as desire.This would be easy, and perhaps it would be fun. But easy has never been something that Neji values: there is no strength to be found in taking something that offers no challenge.
But to hold oneself back from taking something so simply offered -- yes, there is strength in that.
Neji pulls his hand away, and smiles, and adds Uzumaki Naruto to the long, long list of things that he wants but he will not let himself have.
(ilu!)
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oh man, I suck at non-canon ships for this fandom
Zuko is about to resurrect and redirect his cutting retort when Sokka grabs his arm. "She means it," he mutters. "Do you really want to wake up sopping wet and freezing? Come on."
"Let go of me," Zuko mutters in return, shaking his hand off, but he follows Sokka until they're in the clearing they were gathering wood in earlier. "Now what? Are we supposed to talk?"
"We could make out," Sokka suggests.
To his own sheer horror, Zuko almost agrees out of curiosity, before he works out that Sokka was joking. This whole traitor-to-his-blood-and-country thing sucks. He misses his uncle. He misses Mai. He wishes Sokka was not so obnoxiously good at things like having a normal family and a sane sister, and talking to girls, and just standing there with his stupid, handsome, unscarred face. Sokka is probably a really good kisser. The bastard.
"Ha ha," he says scathingly, and gives a flick of the wrist that sends a thin flame shooting in the other boy's direction; Sokka flings himself out of the way and ends up sprawled on the ground.
"Hey, uncool." Sokka stands up and gives him a baleful look. There are leaves in his hair. Zuko laughs, and he makes sure that it's not a cruel laugh, but Sokka narrows his eyes and then leaps at him with surprising speed.
Fifteen minutes and one extremely dirty leaf-fight later, Sokka has mud in his hair and a bruise on his chin and doesn't look so damn symmetrical any more.
Zuko smiles and holds out his hand. "Truce?"
Re: oh man, I suck at non-canon ships for this fandom
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The fabric is heavy and smooth with precise regions of rough, draconic luxury in a contrasting thread. Zuko rubs it between his fingers and hears the words of the ceremony drumming their way from one side of his head to the other, endless, almost panicked. Incense is leaking through the slit in the curtains in front of him, and the smell mingles with the heat of his outfit and the clamour of hundreds of people all trying at once to make a respectfully small amount of noise. His head aches and with every sandalwood-choked breath his throat seems to close a little further.
"You're freaking out, aren't you. Idiot. I told you not to."
Mai is a vision in deep scarlet and shadowy folds of fabric as one of her hands emerges from the cascade of her sleeve and firmly takes hold of his own. His fingers, he knows, are like the brocade itself: smooth with rough patches. Burns. Callouses. Scars. He no longer finds shame in the markings that set him apart; she has touched every one of them and set him free.
"Breathe," she tells him. "Just say the words, and sit on the seat, and other people will do everything else."
He swallows. "I know. I know. I --"
Her mouth is on his for a brief, hot, wonderful moment, and Zuko forgets to be scared.
"My lord," Mai murmurs into his ear, her dry tone just as grounding as the kiss had been. "Your people await."
Zuko closes his eyes.
The Fire Lord opens them.
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Aaaaaaaand Rhodey and Jarvis.
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All things considered, Rhodes quite likes Jarvis; it's good to know that Tony has someone to talk to in the midst of his creative trances. Between the AI and Pepper, there's no chance that Tony will slip into his student habits of developing vitamin deficiencies and severe sleep deprivation in the name of perfecting a new design. (Although Rhodes has noticed that since -- well, since, you know -- Tony has been different about food, more appreciative, both in extravagant and subtle ways.)
But Rhodes stills gets a bit creeped out by the fact that the house has a personality. It's all very well that the lights turn on when he steps into the bathroom, and clean hand towels slide out from a hidden drawer, but when you get right down to it, it still means that someone is watching him piss.
And that's just not cool.
"Are you in contact with Tony? Right now?"
"I have been uploaded to the suit helmet," Jarvis says. "I am always in contact."
"Tell him his fridge is full of shitty beer."
A pause.
"Mr Stark has asked me to inform you that he's a little busy right now, and also that it is your fault for coming around so often and drinking all the good stuff."
Rhodes laughs and nabs a bottle of something that's mediocre, but at least cold. When he wanders out of the kitchen his eye is caught by something in the corner of one of Tony's workspaces, a hologram design of -- "Hey, new prototype?"
It blinks out of existence.
"Oh, come on." He also doesn't like never knowing where to look. "Let me see."
"Apologies. That is a personal project of Mr Stark's. No visual access allowed."
"Come on." He takes a swig of the beer, locates an armchair, and tries not to think about the fact that he is wheedling an AI. "I'll -- I don't know, what do things like you want? -- I'll get Tony to design you a friend! Maybe one with Jessica Alba's voice. How's that."
"No visual access allowed."
"Yeah, I figured."
"Out of curiosity," says the glass-voice, after a moment, "did you actually think that would work?"
Rhodes grins, leans back in his chair, and props his boots up on one of Tony's obscenely expensive tables.
"Nah," he says. "I've always kind of thought you were gay."
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:D
how about both?
The young woman pressed her lips together and shot a look at her companion. "Well?"
He shrugged, hands in the pockets of his trousers, and leaned forward. "S'funny, usually just showing the paper's enough. I don't suppose you know if you're psychically retardant? No?"
"Excuse me?" Pepper drew herself up, and was about to signal security to lead them outside when Tony appeared at her shoulder.
"Look, Potts, you promised me a dance and if you don't deliver soon then I will insist on it being the macarena. Oh. Is something wrong?" He slid effortlessly into friendly, professional concern, and the tall man with the untidy hair broke into a wide grin that made him look even more British.
"Look at that! Tony Stark himself! Pleasure to meet you, I'm the Doctor, and this is Martha Jones."
Martha lifted one hand in a slightly embarrassed wave, and Tony shook hands with the Doctor -- somehow, Pepper thought, the capital D was audible. When the handshake broke the two men stood looking at each other for a while, their postures almost mirror-images of insoucient charm, and Pepper realised that there was no way Tony would be turning these two away now. Sure enough --
"Potts," he said, waving two fingers carelessly. "I'd like some champagne."
Pepper knew exactly how this worked. She folded her hands in front of her. "Of course, sir," she said with her most graceful smile.
The Doctor's face settled into something bright and challenging. "Martha...?" He didn't sound too certain, though, and with good reason. Martha put her hands on her hips, displacing a couple of sequins.
"We're at a party. Being your maid once was quite enough -- I'm not about to go all Taming of the Shrew just because you've decided to get into a pissing contest. And yes. I'd like some champagne, thanks."
"Ah." He scratched his head. "Well, all right then. Two champagnes for us, please, Miss Potts."
"Certainly."
When Pepper returned with the drinks, Martha Jones gave her a look that very clearly said she considered her a traitor to the sisterhood, but Tony gave her a look that sparkled with mischief.
"You know," she murmured as she passed him his drink, "I should have left you standing here. Waiting. It would have served you right."
Tony slid his arm around her waist, pulled the empty tray from her hands and handed it to a passing waiter, and beamed at their gatecrashers. "Enjoy the party."
"Oh, we will. I love the macarena." The Doctor beamed back and the two of them melted into the crowd, and Tony laughed and tugged her closer.
"Very nice, Katarina -- what? Don't look so surprised, Potts, I'll have you know I sat through that whole play."
She raised an eyebrow. "Anything to help you win a pissing contest, Mr Stark."
"Hey." Tony released her and stepped to face her, his expression dropping from levity, his voice concerned. "You know I -- I don't think of you as -- you know what I'm saying, right?" His hand rested gently on her upper arm, and they were surrounded by beautiful people saying fascinating things, and Tony was looking at her like they were alone on that desert island. "All that lord and master bullshit, you know --"
"I know." She smiled and reached up to adjust the crease of his collar. "And I believe you'll be paying me overtime, this being a Saturday night."
"You know, I really should hire a personal assistant less demanding than you, Potts."
"You could hire fifty," she said, and let her hands rest on his chest, her index finger just brushing the edge of metal under his shirt. "You'd still be worse off."
Tony laughed and lifted his free hand to squeeze one of hers, and then the mischief flew back all at once, the familiar I've-had-a-great-idea glow suffusing his face. Pepper's heart sank.
"No, Tony," she pleaded, "it’s been a nice evening, don't, don't say it --"
He ignored her. He grinned. "Kiss me, Kate!"
Pepper smiled sweetly and upended his champagne onto his shoes.
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(part 1/2)
"All right, Bones, lesson learned, now can we please move on --"
"Fingerprints, for example, are unique."
She waves her hand in his face and he grabs it with one of his own, moving her plate sidewayswith the other so that her elbow isn't caught in a smear of ketchup.
"And palms," he says, seizing upon the opportunity to distract her from the argument about words by being deliberately unscientific. "Here, I bet I could read something about your future. This line here means --"
"Don't be ridiculous, Booth."
He likes her hands, the promise of efficiency in them, the elegant angles of the joints and the way she handles human bodies, dead or alive, as though they are miracles. He leans closer and looks at her, mockingly intent. "So you don't believe that personal information can be found in skin."
"Of course not."
"But you believe it can be found in bones."
A pause.
"Yes." She smiles at her own admission, comes close to laughing, and their faces are so near that the abruptness of her humour is almost palpable; like a splash of warm water, or a touch.
They have been like this so many times he's lost count. So many ends to so many days when everyone around them has left for their real lives, their not-work lives, the kind of life that Booth vaguely remembers having before this strange, wonderful, infuriating anthropologist came into the picture.
He thinks, I'm probably supposed to miss that. He probably is not meant to want to see her every day of the year, to hang out with her even when the working day is finished. He probably should not think that it wouldn't be a bad thing to see her even in the slim dark between-hours, and that he'd kind of like to wake up in a place where she is.
Nevertheless, that seems to be how he feels.
(part 2/2)
So many times they have been like this, just this close; they have smiled and blurred the lines of work and friendship, and one of them has always, always been the first to lean back. Booth watches her lips and thinks about gravity and concrete and other heavy things, concentrates on keeping his feet flat on the floor so that he doesn't do something stupid like run his fingers underneath her necklace, or lift her hand and learn the shape of its joints with his lips and tongue. No; tonight it's her turn to play the responsible adult, her turn to reestablish the distance, because he's not budging.
"True," she says. She doesn't move. She looks at him, her eyes alert and unwavering -- Booth feels like he's being measured.
Her hand slides out of his, very slowly, but she never quite breaks contact, and after a moment she slides her fingers between his until they are tightly laced. Booth looks down to make sure he isn't imagining it, and when he looks up again her smile has an extra layer to it: the familiar precision of her intelligence, the sense that she has flown down a path of reasoning at speeds that most people could barely imagine, and has arrived at a decision.
"What?" he asks, feeling his mouth curve in response. "What?"
"I don't know --" she says, and looks down at their hands, and is quiet.
Booth lifts his other hand, oh-so-careful, like he's showing his empty palms to an armed junkie, and tilts her chin upwards. "-- what that means?" he suggests.
"Yes." Her hand tightens and he can't tell if it's affection or fear. "I'm used to -- this isn't what I -- yes. I don't know how to do this, Booth. I don't know."
Booth ignores the ache of effort that it takes to hold himself in his seat -- gravity, gravity, gravity -- and instead he kisses her index finger, halfway between the knuckles. There's probably a proper technical name for that. She has her language and he has his, and if he's learned anything from working with Temperance Brennan it's the power of a graceful compromise.
"Then we'll start with something you do know," he says, and smooths his thumb across her wrist, and follows the shiver of contact all the way up her arm and the line of her neck to the sudden smile of understanding that diffuses across her face.
"Bones of the wrist," she says, and teaches him.
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OT3. just because.
Two of the nurses have started to give Sakura funny looks, but she doesn't say anything: there is seldom any harm in letting a condition escalate if it is still too generic to be identified.
Sure enough, one day they step up to her with a matched set of expressions, one hopeful and one wary, but both with the same decorative edge of schadenfreude.
Keiko says, "Isn't it weird? Don't you sometimes get scared that they probably like each other more than they like you?"
Juria says, "Have you really kissed Uchiha Sasuke? What was it like?"
Sakura looks from one of them to the other and realises that this thing that she has created with the two people she loves most in the world is being seen as simultaneously her fault, and nothing to do with her at all. Fuck that. She is not a catalyst; she is neither a glue nor a soothing balm; she is no complex chemical to be analysed and tested.
"The patient in bed nine," she says, when the pause has become uncomfortable. "I need his temperature monitored carefully and his bandages changed as soon as they even look like they might be loosening."
"Okay, but --"
"Thank you." Sakura turns on her heel.
learn how much of yourself you can safely give
"Hey, Sakura! Bad day?"
She exhales, grateful beyond her own powers of expression for the simple warmth of Naruto's arms around her waist and the way he rests his chin on her head. One of these days he might even stop growing; despite everything the thought almost makes her smile.
"I've had worse," she says, and it's true, but only just.
Naruto hugs her once more and distracts her with cheerful blather about his own day as he makes a pot of tea. But it's Sasuke who watches the way her hands tremble before she steadies them on her cup, and it's Sasuke who says, "Who was it?" with none of his normal dryness of tone.
"Maki," she says, and doesn't say anything else, but that's fine because Naruto knows how to talk the aches out of her heart and Sasuke knows that sometimes silence is all you can give someone's memory when you have already poured yourself into holding back their pain.
know how to do things for yourself
"Here," she murmurs, "just a -- no, not quite --"
Sasuke lifts his head and gives her this totally affronted look and she comes perilously close to laughing, which would ruin everything because even now Sasuke is still learning how to be laughed at.
"Sakura," he growls. "Are you correcting me?"
"Yes," she says, and winds her fingers through his hair and tugs his anger into a deliciously dangerous expression. "But don't worry, Uchiha, I've been told you're a fast learner."
Naruto gives a warm, lazy laugh and presses his fingers against Sasuke's shoulder, then marks the spot with a bite that looks to be bordering on carelessly sharp. His eyes have fallen into a tense, amazed indigo, and Sakura can never decide what it is that she craves the most: the sensations of her own body, or Sasuke's slow progression into someone who can relinquish control, or the way Naruto pulls himself apart sometimes -- Naruto, who she once thought incapable of inaction of any kind -- and just watches them.
Now Naruto looks at her and laughs again, his smile tight with fond sarcasm. "Sure, Sakura, give him a fucking challenge."
"That," Sakura says, holding his gaze, tugging harder, "was the general idea."